Anna: Hello and welcome to Status Check with Spivey, where we talk about life, law school, law school admissions. This interview will touch on all three of those to some degree, but certainly with a focus on admissions strategy. I’m Anna Hicks-Jaco, Spivey Consulting’s president, and today I’ll be speaking with Sam Parker, who just left her role as Associate Director of Admissions at Harvard Law School and is now Spivey Consulting Group’s newest admissions consultant. I’ll let Sam introduce herself further in a few moments, but just for some basics, she spent seven years at Harvard Law, a couple of those in student services and then most of them in the admissions office, reading applications, making decisions on files, managing the waitlist, interviewing applicants, all of that good stuff. She also earned her masters in higher education at Harvard University in the Graduate School of Education and her bachelor’s from Dartmouth College, and she’ll talk a little bit more about her educational path in just a moment.
Sam is here today to give us her very best pieces of law school admissions advice. I think there are about 25 in all, and we’re going to break them up into three groups. Advice for applicants currently getting ready to submit their applications for the upcoming admission cycle, advice for recent college graduates who aren’t quite yet getting ready to apply, and advice for current college students who are interested in applying to law school in the future. So with that, I’ll go ahead and let Sam introduce herself.
Sam: I’m so excited to be joining Spivey Consulting Group. My name’s Sam. I grew up in the great state of Kansas. Shout out to all my Midwesterners out there who are listening. My parents both went to college; they both went to the University of Iowa—go Hawkeyes. But growing up, I went to a big public high school. The Ivy League was not something that people talked about. My grandparents had maybe heard of Harvard, but the rest of the Ivy League was not common vocabulary in my household growing up. And I remember when I was applying to college, I was, like, absolutely clueless. I did not know what I was doing. I knew I was going to go to college. My dad, from essentially the day I was born, was like, “You will be going to college.” But applying to college was this whole black hole that nobody in my family knew anything about, and my high school counselor at the time I was applying was retiring, so I don’t even think I met with him once. So I truly went into this pretty blind. Applied to way too many schools, didn’t know what I was doing. Ended up going to Dartmouth College and had an absolute blast there. But even getting there is insane, how I ended up there, right? I had a friend in high school, shout out to Heidi Brown, who is now an ER doctor, but her aunt had gone to Dartmouth. I’d never heard of the school before. And she was like, “I think you should look into this school. I think it’d be a good fit for you.” And I was like, “Sure, I’ve never heard of it,” but I looked at the application requirements. It was actually pretty easy to apply with the Common App, so I was like, “Sure, I’ll send off an application. We’ll see what happens.” I got a likely letter from that school, which—this is something Dartmouth did at the time, I don’t know if they still do this, but I got a letter in February essentially saying, “You’re going to be admitted so you can kind of relax, and we really, really hope you join our campus.” And that was the first school I had gotten into. I remember running around my house screaming. And then I went and toured it with my mom, and that was sort of my first experience with what is the Ivy League, right, and these, like, elite institutions.
I say this because there’s so many schools I didn’t apply to in high school, for graduate school, because I maybe hadn’t heard of them or thought, there’s no way I’m ever going to get in, this, like, girl from a public school in Kansas. Or if I do get in, like, there’s no way I’m going to fit in with these people. I’m going to be the dumbest person in my incoming class. I, like, truly believed that, like going into Dartmouth College, I remember, like, laying awake at night thinking like, “I am going to struggle at this school. Is this a good decision? I think I’m going to be, like, at the bottom of my class.” Turns out I did beautifully there. Like, admissions did not make a mistake. But I say all of this just to encourage everyone, shoot your shot and apply to those dream schools, because you never know what’s going to happen, and admissions offices don’t make mistakes—if you get in, you’re meant to be there, they feel very confident in your academic potential to succeed. And I just really regret not putting myself out there more and applying to more schools, and getting more help with the process, because who knows? I could have had so many more options, and I want everyone to have as many options as possible and to, like, really go shoot for the stars.
I’ve been working in higher ed my whole career. I started at Harvard Law School in February of 2018, and I actually started a couple months before my soon-to-be boss, Dean Kristi Jobson, who also came on board at HLS as the Dean of Admissions in 2018. I originally started out at the law school working in the Dean of Students office, and I got to work with all of our student organizations at the school, which is about 100. So I was really close to the students, and I got to know so many amazing leaders on campus. I also helped plan big events, like orientation, commencement, which are still my favorite times of the year on campus. Got to know Dean Kristi Jobson through that role, and she was hiring an assistant director over five years ago now, and had reached out and she was like, “Do you have any interest in applying for this job? I think you’d be a good fit,” and I was like, “Yeah, that sounds amazing.” So I applied, Kristi grilled me in my interview—just as she has grilled many applicants who applied in the past years—but I was really lucky to be put on the team. Had an incredible experience in the HLS JD admissions office.
Past couple years, Kristi, who is just a dear friend and one of the best people I’ve ever known and an incredible leader, you know, when I mentioned maybe potentially moving over to Spivey, she was so excited for me. She was really, really supportive. So was the rest of the team. They were, like, so happy for me to make this change and get started with Spivey, and I’m definitely going to miss them all dearly, but I’ve already been having so much fun meeting clients on new calls, and I’m so excited to be kicking off my work with a few folks next week. But all that to say, the team’s amazing. Shout out to HLS, and they’re just really supportive of all the resources Spivey’s put out in terms of like the blog and the podcast and really trying to make the law school application process as transparent and as easy as possible for people out there because it’s an intimidating process and there’s a lot of unknowns and a lot of questions and it’s very different from applying to undergrad. So, really commend Spivey for those efforts, and I’m excited to be helping with those today!
Anna: Well, we are very, very lucky to have you and so delighted to have you on our team, both for the clients who you’ll be working with and for your overall knowledge contributing to our team, and for the knowledge that you’ll be able to disseminate out to all applicants in our podcasts and in our blogs.
So, today, the conceit of today’s podcast is basically your best pieces of admissions advice. And this is from your years working in law school admissions, not only at Harvard Law, but talking to people in admissions from various law schools across the country—I think a lot of applicants aren’t aware how sort of embedded with one another law school admissions officers are relative to undergraduate institutions. Like, there are fewer than 200 ABA-accredited law schools in the country. This is a relatively tight community. So you have a ton of experience both in Harvard Law admissions and getting to know law school admissions as a whole. And my understanding is that you have advice for people at sort of different stages of the process. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Sam: I do. So, as I was thinking through the advice that I wanted to share with prospective applicants, I kind of started categorizing my advice into three buckets, right? The first being, I have advice for people who are still in college and they’re thinking they might apply to law school one day. I have advice for people who just graduated from undergrad, so congrats to all of you who just graduated—that’s a huge accomplishment; you should be so proud of yourselves and your efforts—or people who’ve graduated within the last year. And then lastly, I have advice for people who are actively applying to law school this cycle. And that advice sort of varies depending on the category, so I don’t know if there’s one particular category you feel most excited to start with, but happy to start with any of those.
Anna: I think let’s start out with the last category and work our way backwards. So let’s start with the people who are maybe most gung-ho and ready to start out this process right now. But the people who are at earlier stages of the process, maybe aren’t quite getting ready to apply yet but they’re in undergrad, or they have just graduated but they’re not yet applying, I think that this advice will be helpful for everybody, and then we can sort of narrow down as we go so that we can be most efficient with people’s time. How does that sound?
Sam: Perfect. Alright, so we’ll start out with people who are actively applying this cycle, and when I say that, I mean they’re applying in the 2025-2026 application cycle with apps opening, you know, late August, early September.
My first piece of advice is—and for anyone who’s just graduated, get a job and commit to that job, which I’ll talk about later—but if you are currently working, please do not quit or leave your job to study for the LSAT or to prepare your application materials. We saw this a lot this year that people were doing this, and it’s not looked at positively by admissions officers. Admissions officers don’t like to see big gaps on your resume for any amount of time, the exception being if you have a personal or family emergency or if you’re acting as a caretaker or you’re in the hospital or something like that, of course you should take time off. But if otherwise your life is, there’s nothing happening, stay employed, stick with your job. Admissions officers want to see that you followed through on your work commitments, and you’ve worked at least a year or ideally more at any given place before you transition to something new. So that’s my first piece of advice, is get a job and keep that job, and really fulfill the commitment that you’ve made at the organization you’ve decided to join.
Anna: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good one. And that’s certainly something that we get questions about all the time of, you know, “Oh, hey, I have this possibility, you know, I could take a few months off of work,” or you know, “I could just leave my job because that’s financially feasible for me for whatever reason, and I could just purely focus on the LSAT.” Which, I totally understand the instinct from which that comes, because when people do talk about law school admissions, rightfully so, they talk about the LSAT score and your undergraduate GPA being these paramount factors in the admissions process—which is absolutely true, but not to the exclusion of everything else. And to the extent that you can have that work experience, something else that we’ve talked a lot about on this podcast in the past few years especially, is the increasing importance of employability—
Sam: Yes.
Anna: —and showing that you can actually stay in a job long term and, you know, maybe you have a great letter of recommendation from your supervisor, but showing that you actually can stay in a job in a professional role goes a long way toward showing that employability, versus if you were at a job for, you know, two, three months and then left, that sort of goes in the opposite direction. So that’s great advice. That’s super helpful, and definitely something that I think people should listen to if that is a situation that they are fortunate enough to be considering.
Sam: Yes.
Anna: And the thing is, I think sometimes it even happens in situations where people are not necessarily coming from a place of great privilege where their parents are going to sponsor them; they’re thinking, you know, “I’m going to make some real sacrifices in order to allocate my time to do this really important thing.” So I get that instinct. So I think it’s super helpful to know that is not going to be the best call for you in terms of overall admission strategy. Okay, great. Well, thank you for that number one. What are your next pieces of advice for people who are getting ready to apply?
Sam: So my next piece of advice is not to rush your application. I get so many questions about what is actually the best time to apply, because a lot of law schools out there operate on a rolling admissions basis, which means at the beginning of the cycle, they have yet to fill any spots in their class, so there’s just a lot more room that they have. You know, if you apply later in the cycle, spots have already been taken by people. People have already been admitted. There are just less spots, so sometimes that means it can be a little bit harder to get into a school if you’re applying at the end of the cycle, if you’re applying at a school’s deadline. There’s definitely an advantage in applying early. Before Thanksgiving is usually what we recommend, but only if your application materials are ready to go and you feel 100% confident in them. If you do not feel 100% confident in your application materials, it is always going to be better to take more time with them—to take a pause to reflect, take the LSAT one more time, put more energy and efforts into studying for that, take a little bit time with your personal statement, get more people to look at it and give you feedback—than it is to apply earlier. I’ve seen a lot of people in my years in admissions who apply right when an application opens on September 1st, or September 15th in HLS’s case, and those apps, some of them are okay, but a lot of them don’t tend to be the strongest applications because you can tell that somebody really rushed to try to submit on that app open date, thinking it would give them the best chance, and then they get denied really quickly because their app just falls short in so many different ways.
So don’t rush your application. Please take your time, and give yourself a long runway. Start now. Give yourself two to six months to really prepare your application materials so that you can do the best job with them, and get that feedback, retake the test if you need to. Don’t get started one month before you’re hoping to submit.
Anna: Yeah. Dean Z for Michigan Law is going to love that advice. Every time she’s on our podcast, I feel like we end up on this topic one way or another. I think it’s just a common piece of misinformation—and an understandable sort of misunderstanding of the admissions process, because there is that root of a rolling admissions process, which does have some truth to it. And certainly, it is disadvantageous to apply in March versus in October.
Sam: Yeah.
Anna: Like, absolutely, there are differences here. But I think you’re spot on in that people get this notion of like, “I have to apply September 1st,” or even, “I have to apply in the month of September,” which is just not beneficial to you in terms of putting together actually your strongest application. So it’s good to hear that, that perspective from your experience also. What’s up next?
Sam: Alright. My next piece of advice for people who are applying this cycle is, your test scores are very important. That is one big way in your application that you’re going to demonstrate your academic potential, which matters not only to admissions officers who want to make sure everyone they’re admitting is going to be able to do the work at their school, but it’s also important to any faculty reviewers who are also part of that admissions process. However, it’s okay to retake the LSAT or the GRE if you don’t get the score you want the first time. Lots of people do this. I would say it’s more common to take the LSAT two or three times than to only take it one time. It’s rare that we see applicants apply with just one score. And I would say, if you’re shooting for the stars and you’re trying to get into your dream school and you’re not quite yet at or near the median test score for that school, and you’ve only taken the LSAT or the GRE once, take the test again.
Something that I’ve noticed in my time is, sometimes we’ll see people apply, their test scores nowhere close to our median, they only took the test once and they didn’t attempt to retake it at all, our number one question is, why didn’t they attempt to retake it? Why didn’t they study for a few more months, work a little bit harder and try to increase that score even by one point? And that’s something our faculty reviewers used to point out a lot too, right, is they didn’t wanna put the extra work in to try to get a better score? Not a great sign for law school if you’re not willing to try again and work a little bit harder and persist, because law school is really difficult. Those courses are challenging. You’re probably not going to get everything right on your first attempt. You’re going to have to try again and again. So people wanna see that in the admissions process.
Other thing I wanted, just some general feedback on test scores. The LSAC, I’m sure a lot of people know, are going to send admissions officers all the test scores that you have from the last five years when you apply through the LSAC. So please, please, please do not take the LSAT or the GRE for that matter, to get a diagnostic score without studying or preparing first. You’re not going to do very well, and admissions officers are going to see that first score. And sometimes when you have a lower score to start and then there’s a huge jump in your LSAT score, that also brings up a lot of questions with admissions officers, which isn’t going to help you, right? So take your time with the tests. Study, study, study. On average, it takes something like four to six months to study for these tests. About 10 hours a week is what’s recommended. And you know, at least one day out of those weeks you should be sitting down and doing a full-length practice test and being really strict about timing yourself to get used to the conditions of the test so that on test day you feel really confident going in, and you feel comfortable with sometimes the added pressure of being timed in a space for that room. That’s my advice there.
Anna: That was great advice, and I think that people need to be aware that the LSAT is a learnable test and that no one is going to—well, you know, maybe I shouldn’t be so categorical—I’m sure there is some genius out there who would just sit down cold for the LSAT and get a 180, but apart from that, no one is going in and fulfilling their full LSAT potential without having studied for it first. There’s the actual subject matter, and then as you said, there’s also the fact of just getting used to the testing environment, the testing format, how it works, and making it so that those outside impositions are not clouding your ability to get the right answers and showcase your true academic potential and your intellectual potential. It’s absolutely something that you should be studying for and preparing well for before you take that test. That’s great advice.
Something else that you mentioned a couple of times in there that I would be curious—maybe it’s going to be a little bit of a tangent, but I think our listeners would be very curious to hear a little bit more about your faculty admissions committee and how that sort of plays into your admissions process. On an abbreviated level; certainly we don’t need to get into the nitty-gritty of your whole process.
Sam: Yeah. And Harvard is really transparent about their process. But multiple admissions officers will read your app. From there, we kind of determine who we’d like to interview for admission to Harvard Law School. Once a candidate is interviewed, their application is going to go to someone on our faculty committee. And we have a number of faculty members who review that application, and they give their input, they put comments on the application as well. They score it, they have a different rubric. And then the application will go to committee, and the admissions committee is actually the group that’s making all final decisions, but they are considering that faculty input, and the faculty input really matters, because these are the people who are going to be teaching these students next year, right? These students are going to be in their classes. So we want to make sure that we’re admitting students that faculty are excited to teach, that these faculty feel like are ready for the work they’re going to have to complete in their classrooms. So the faculty comments really, really matter, and it is good to know that it is not just admissions officers that are going to be looking at your application and interviewing you and considering you for admission. There are other people who contribute as well, and faculty certainly weigh in at a number of different law schools, including Harvard. So definitely keep that in mind.
Anna: That’s an interesting part of the process that plays in different ways at different law schools. I certainly will not name any names here, but I have heard from a number of admissions officers that sometimes they find the faculty admissions committee cumbersome to deal with. I will say, from my perspective, when I was at Syracuse and we had a faculty admissions committee, I thought they were incredibly helpful. I thought they were just like giving these great insights and never sort of imposing beyond the level to which they were helpful for our efforts. So I thought they were great. I’m a big fan of faculty admissions committees, personally.
Sam: I actually loved our faculty readers, and like, shout out to these faculty who are reading, like, hundreds and hundreds of applications and giving us their very thoughtful comments on them to help us make an informed decision. We really valued their comments, and sometimes they would share things that we’d be like, “Oh my gosh, we didn’t even think of that, and that’s such a good point.”
Anna: Mm. Yeah.
Sam: So I really valued the faculty feedback and input, and I like that Harvard incorporated their voices, for sure.
Anna: Yeah, definitely. Okay, we can get off my tangent now and go back to your pieces of advice.
Sam: Alright! So, this is probably the most important piece of advice I wanted to give.
Anna: Ooh, okay.
Sam: And this is one that my former team was like, “Can you share this with applicants?”
Anna: Okay. Let’s all listen.
Sam: Okay. Please, please, in your application components, do not overshare with the admissions committee. Millennials like to say TMI, or too much information. There is such a thing as sharing too much information. If you are providing information or details in your application that are going to shock, potentially disgust, or traumatize a reader, just don’t do it.
There’s a lot of bad advice out there, and I think sometimes applicants tend to overshare or they want to share a lot of the most difficult things they’ve gone through, because they’re trying to elicit sympathy from the reader in order to get a desirable decision, but it almost always backfires. And yes, admissions officers who are reading these statements or these things in your application might indeed sympathize with you or feel bad with you, or really empathize with some of the experiences and situations you’ve had, but that’s not going to be a reason why they admit you. No one’s going to admit you because they sympathize with you or they feel bad for you. They’re going to admit you because they feel like you have the academic potential to succeed at their school, because you’ve demonstrated professional potential to get a job and stay employed, because you’ve demonstrated that you’re going to be a kind and engaged community member. We’re not admitting someone because they’ve gone through something difficult. So I think that’s something important to think about. And I know Mike likes to give helpful analogies, so I came up with an analogy that—
Anna: Oh, nice.
Sam: —we’ll see how you all receive it. But let’s say, you know, a good example is, let’s say you’re at a networking event with a bunch of legal professionals, and you’re having conversations with people, and one of them asks you, “Can you talk about a challenge you’ve overcome,” or “Can you share more about your background?” You’re probably not going to give someone the gory details on your recent hernia surgery or an invasive dental procedure that you’ve had, right? Like you’re just not going to go into those details. Similarly, you’re not going to tell them about the hardest thing that you’ve ever had to deal with in your life and how hard that was for you. You’re not going to suddenly, like, dump a bunch of feelings on someone at a networking event, because that wouldn’t come across as professional. That would be oversharing. That would be just, like, too much for that situation.
It’s the same with admissions officers, right? These are people who, they’re being introduced to you for the first time. This is the first kind of chance that they’re meeting you, and you don’t want to overshare and have them asking more questions by the end of your application than you’ve answered. So please, please don’t overshare, and be really thoughtful about how you answer law schools’ prompts with the statements and what you’re deciding to share, and just make sure it really relates to why you want to go to law school, what’s motivating what you want to do, what are some of your long-term goals, and that you’re sharing parts of yourself that are going to contribute to the community and be part of your everyday life in law school and beyond.
Anna: Okay, so that’s a nuanced piece of advice. I think it would be helpful to get a little deeper, even, into that. The networking analogy I think is a super useful one, of thinking, you know, is this something that I would feel comfortable chatting with a lawyer about? Or is this something where I would be, you know, maybe kind of embarrassed, or I wouldn’t want them to know this about me? I think that’s a great way of thinking about it. Where I think that it can sometimes get tricky and sort of in gray areas, especially as we talk about the sort of areas of particularly difficult experiences that maybe don’t have that same level of disgust factor as, like, a health thing or that kind of thing. Let’s say it is very relevant to one’s motivations for going to law school and aspirations in the law. How do you find the level of detail with which to talk about formative and important experiences in your life that do have those more traumatic or vulnerable elements that might be difficult to read about?
Sam: Absolutely. So, I think if there’s an experience that you’ve had that’s been really difficult or challenging, it’s been really informative to you, or it’s made you who you are, or essentially really been the reason for your desire to go to law school, you can absolutely talk about that in your statements. However, I want you to keep the actual story and experience pretty short and keep it pretty factual, and then transition pretty quickly into, “And this is what has led me to want to go to law school, for these reasons, and this is what I want to do with my law degree.” I don’t wanna see two pages of just you telling a traumatic story.
Anna: Right.
Sam: I want you to maybe address that in one paragraph, quickly, factually, and then get to the meat of the actual prompt, which is, in most cases, tell us more about you, tell us about your motivations for wanting to go to law school, and give us more information on what you’re thinking long term after you graduate from law school.
Anna: I agree. I think avoiding, sort of, being gratuitous—
Sam: Yes.
Anna: —which I get is very much a subjective word, and that’s open to interpretation, but I think that’s part of what you’re getting at here. I think that that’s very helpful advice on sort of the length and how you are drawing the connections to those big important questions of, okay, how has this actually influenced the person you are today and your reasons for wanting to go to law school? You mentioned bringing it back to the prompt. I think personal statement prompts used to be, by and large, more open-ended of kind of just, you know—
Sam: Yes.
Anna: —“Talk to us about whatever.” Like, “Tell us about yourself.” And a lot of schools have gotten more specific with that in the last 10, 15 years. But it’s something that, even for schools that are still that open-ended, are still sort of broadly just like, “Just tell us about yourself,” very much so, the strategy of law school admissions has evolved—where, Spivey Consulting, a decade ago, we also advised in a much more sort of open-ended way with regards to personal statements, but it very much has developed in the direction of, “Okay, no, you really need to be getting into, what are your actual motivations for going to law school, for becoming an attorney,” in a way that wasn’t necessarily the case before. And I think part of that stemmed from the fact that it used to be sort of a real applicant’s market, there was a big decrease in applicants, and law schools were really just sort of looking for ways to fill up their classes with people who are going to be able to do the work at their institutions, and, like, the standards were lower than they are now. They were less competitive. And I’m allowed to say this because I was applying when the standards were lower!
So yeah, I think that that’s really important. Drawing those connections and making it really clear, okay, how is this actually informing the meat of what you’re talking about in this essay? That’s great advice and it’s super nuanced advice, and I think it’s important for applicants to be thinking about, especially if they are talking about sort of these big important experiences and vulnerable things that have happened to them in their application, which oftentimes does absolutely make sense to include, but you have to be careful about it.
Sam: Absolutely. And I also want listeners to know, you do not need to share your trauma in the application process if you don’t want to. If it’s not related to what you want to share with admissions officers, you don’t need to re-traumatize yourself by writing about that. If you do, that’s great, but you don’t need to. So totally up to you. But yes, keep it short and sweet, and really hone in on your objectives and where you’re going.
Anna: Mm. Yeah. I love that. Okay, so what’s up next?
Sam: Okay. So my next one is not to take creative risks. Which I’m sure a lot of people have heard, but the number one question I’ve gotten in my career as an admissions officer is, how do I stand out in the application process? And I’ve seen a lot of interesting approaches of people trying to do this with the resume and their statements over the years. You’re going to hear it from me, you’re going to hear it from lots of people who work in admissions now, but please, please, please, do not use colors or pictures or graphics on your resume to try to stand out. They make it harder for admissions officers to read and comprehend quickly when they’re reviewing apps. They also just don’t come across as professional. We want to make sure you’re putting your best foot forward and really showcasing yourself as someone who is employable and who can get a job at a law firm or at a public interest non-profit, things like that.
Similarly, admissions officers are looking for professional pieces of writing that clearly and concisely outline your motivations and goals for law school and beyond, like we’ve discussed. You know, I’ve seen people try to use quotes, or bring in citations, or poems, or use over-the-top humor, or share very personal anecdotes that just don’t respond to the prompts and they just don’t work. So there’s no need to take creative risks. Sometimes that is beneficial in the undergrad application process and applying to colleges.
Anna: Sure. Yeah.
Sam: But for law school, we’re looking for people who are going to be entering the legal profession, and we want to make sure that we can put you before an employer and you’re going to represent yourself well and not do those things. So I wouldn’t do it in the application process.
Anna: Yeah. That is very, very good advice, and certainly one piece of advice that I think any admissions officer can identify with from reading a cycle of applications. You know, it’s so interesting, I think you might find this funny. This is one of the things that I have gotten the most pushback on on social media, on TikTok, which I find so funny. Like, there’s some things where I’ll say it and I’m like, “I know some people are going to take some issue with this, but like I think the root of it is important for people to know.” This one, I–it totally caught me off guard. I said something like, “Don’t make your resume pink,” or like, “Don’t make your resume a color,” and it did not occur to me that this could possibly be controversial. But I got so much pushback! Someone was like, “I was a paralegal at a top law firm, and I gave them my pink resume, and they said it was, like, so differentiating and so interesting.” I’m like, “Okay. I mean, I don’t know what to say to this. I’m glad that you got your paralegal job. This is the advice that I know from working with a team who has actually worked in law school admissions offices for like 250+ years. That’s the best advice that I can give.” So I found that to be very funny that that was the one that I got pushed back on.
Sam: Yeah!
Anna: Because that was the one that I, like, could not imagine like a single actual law school admissions officer ever even remotely pushing back on that.
Sam: No. It just makes it so much harder to review your resume and review your application. If you’re using too many colors and graphics and things, it’s actually hard for an admissions officer to comprehend quickly, which is what you want them to do. Right? They might only be looking at your resume for one minute, so you need to make sure it’s as simple and easy to read as possible, and you’re getting the information across that you wanna get across. Right? Don’t distract them.
Anna: Yes. Yes. And I think your point about legal employers is spot on. You know, obviously the applicant is going to work with your career services office and whatever, but you don’t want career services to have to work with them for six hours to get them to a resume that is acceptable to be submitted to a law firm. So yes, definitely a good piece of advice, and contrary to what my TikTok would have you believe, not a controversial piece of advice.
Sam: Okay. My next point is another one that I’ve seen people make some mistakes with over the years. So I wanted to just put it out there. Be smart about how you engage with admissions offices. You do not want to appear over-eager. As an applicant, I think it’s always great to go to events, go to information sessions that are being put on by actual law school admissions offices about their application components and what they’re looking for, what they’re not looking for.
Anna: For sure.
Sam: But you do not and should not attend every single event an admissions offices is hosting, because you’re taking space away from other people who could be attending who are also looking to get that information, right? And often it’s going to be the same content.
You also should not reach out to introduce yourself or ask unnecessary questions, maybe ever, but certainly not multiple times. You know, I’ve had prospective students over the years who hand me their resumes or business cards or hand-outs that link to websites at information sessions over the years. And again, it just doesn’t come across as professional, and it sometimes comes across as a little too over-eager, where we might be remembering you not in the most positive light. So go to one event per school, get the information you need. And please, please, please, only reach out to admissions offices if you have a genuine question that you can’t get an answer to on a law school admissions office’s website. If that answer is easily available on the website—
Anna: Not a reason to reach out.
Sam: Yeah, not a good reason to reach out, and it’s not going to look good that you didn’t take one minute to look at their website to find the answer there. You really don’t want to be known as the applicant who overwhelms the office with too many phone calls, too many emails, or who takes up too much space and time at events. So just keep it professional and engage once, and that’s really all you need to do.
Anna: Can you give us some examples of situations maybe that you’ve encountered in the past where someone reached out to the admissions office and it made sense, and maybe even potentially was, like, elevating or a positive in some way, or at least was not a negative?
Sam: That’s a good question. You know, I’ve had people who, at the end of information sessions, would come up to me, they would introduce themselves really quickly. “Hi, my name’s Sam. Thank you so, so much for sharing all this information. I found it incredibly valuable. I did have one follow-up question after listening to the PowerPoint that you just gave,” right? And they would ask, like, a very thoughtful question that I didn’t address. And that was a great way to stand out, right? Like, “Oh, you’re being really thoughtful about this, and this is an answer that you can’t get the answer to on our website, and I didn’t talk about.” So that’s always going to be looked upon in a good light.
Anna: Do you have any, like, crazy admission stories in this realm of people just like going way beyond the line of what’s acceptable or appropriate?
Sam: Oh, yes. We’ve had people who call the office so many times that they end up essentially on a red flag list, right? Where we’re like, this applicant is just–they’re not taking cues. They’re not listening to explicit directions from us to not reach out.
Anna: Yeah.
Sam: They’re not following directions, and that is never a good sign for someone who’s looking to go to law school. We’ve also had people, like, send things to the office, like many, many letters, handwritten letters, or gifts that people didn’t ask for. And again, it’s just weird. Please don’t send admissions offices anything, unless you’ve interviewed within an admissions office and you’re sending a really nice handwritten note. That can be a nice touch. But other than that, please don’t send anything to admissions offices. One thing you know is a limit, we’ve had applicants over the years who’ve submitted videos that we didn’t ask for—
Anna: Hmm, interesting.
Sam: —or they’ve linked to personal websites that we didn’t ask for. And oftentimes, we will watch the video, we will go to the website. But again, you didn’t follow directions, you didn’t do what was asked. And more often than not, it’s just a very out-there thing that you’re sharing with us that doesn’t paint you in a positive light. It overshares. It gives us too much information about you that detracts from the rest of your application. So I don’t recommend doing it.
Anna: Yes, that is good advice. There’s a story from someone in our firm, I feel bad that I don’t remember who, but there was someone who their admissions office got a postcard from an applicant, a new one every day, just throughout the admission cycle. That was a red flag in terms of the type of judgment that this individual would be using when they are seeking legal employment and engaging with professors and engaging with the school. So that does reflect on your application. Okay. Good advice. What’s next?
Sam: This goes into my next piece of advice, which is, be really careful of what you share online, and be critical of what you see online.
Anna: Mm.
Sam: So, I’ll explain. Anything that you post online is fair game to admissions officers. Are they going to go looking for every op-ed that you’ve ever written? Are they going to go looking at your Facebook and your Instagram? Probably not, but they could, and they do sometimes. Admissions officers, as Karen likes to say on our team, are very curious. And if there’s a question that comes up in your application, if there’s a flag they want to explore, they’re going to go beyond your application materials. So anything you post online is fair game, and you need to be aware of that. You know, there’s a lot of people who are on Reddit, LSData, among other platforms that are out there. And those can be helpful, I think, places to go if you’re just looking for information. I would be hesitant about posting on them, because admissions officers are on those platforms. They’re all over them.
Anna: Yep.
Sam: They will figure out who you are if you share too much identifying information, and that can really hurt you in the process, right?
Anna: Even just your specific numbers down to, like, the digits plus the state you’re from can be enough.
Sam: Easily. I have worked with people who are sleuths. They’re like expert sleuths, and they will find people with the littlest amount of information possible that somebody shared. And it often ends up hurting the applicant because we found out, oh, you’ve already been admitted to these other schools, maybe we’re not going to admit you now, because I don’t know if you’re actually going to come because you’ve said this other school’s your top choice and we’re not.
Anna: Mm. Yeah. So what’s the type of situation where you come across a Reddit post and there’s something in it that makes you say, “We have to figure out who this person is in our applicant pool”? What types of situations are you in where that happens?
Sam: Several. Sometimes someone posts on Reddit and it’s just incredibly negative, right? And someone’s really, really negative, or they’re outing other people, or they’re just being unkind community members. Well, we don’t want those people in our community, so we’re going to try to figure out who they are.
Anna: Yeah, totally.
Sam: Sometimes you’ll see people on Reddit who just post things that make us question their lack of judgment, right? They’ll be posting inappropriate pictures, or saying things that just, like, aren’t professional, or aren’t appropriate. And again, we don’t want that person representing our school if we’re going to put them in front of these really impressive law firms. So be really, really careful about what you share online. I think it’s fine to use these platforms to get information, but there’s no need to share information, you don’t need to comment unless you have something valuable to contribute or to help someone out.
The other thing I wanted to say, right, is that there’s a lot of bad information out there. Mike Spivey says this all the time, but you should be really critical about what you are reading online and on these platforms, because there’s a lot of bad advice. Don’t take everything at face value. Oftentimes, you know, you’re going to hear from people who say, “This is what admissions officers are looking for in the statements,” or “This is how you should format your resume,” or “This type of letter is really what’s going to be the golden ticket to get you in.” It’s probably incorrect information. It’s best to stick to the experts like your friends here at Spivey, or to talk to the law schools themselves and get the information directly from the source, and the people who are actually going to be evaluating your applications.
So be careful what you share, and be critical of what you’re reading online, and please, please, please, do not take everything at face value. You might be getting really bad advice, and it might be hurting you.
Anna: Yeah, that is excellent advice on both ends, certainly. I absolutely see—on both sides of this—I see people who say, you know, “I don’t want to out myself,” but then like they give five pieces of information and I’m immediately like, “Any admissions officer at any school where you’ve applied could know exactly who you are.” So be wary, you know, be aware they have a lot of information about you. And if you say something that reflects negatively on you on Reddit, that could reflect negatively on you in the admissions office also. So that’s a very good piece of advice.
And then, certainly, on that second component, as you said, that is something that we have talked about quite a few times, and it’s absolutely true. I’m sure, as an admissions officer, you saw plenty of posts where you read them and you were like, “This person who’s stating this thing is 100% fact is just, like, dead wrong. It’s just not correct, like, at all.” And it’s so frustrating.
Sam: 100%.
Anna: Yeah. Yeah, and especially when you’re in an admissions office, you’re not really able to go in and say, “No, that’s not correct. Here’s the right information.”
Sam: No.
Anna: Like, that’s not something that’s within your purview. So yeah, it can certainly be frustrating, and I think that that’s the most important thing is to advise people, you know, as a consumer, as an applicant, you want to be skeptical and evaluate the sources of the information that you are taking. “Is this someone who actually knows what they are talking about? What proof have they given me that they know what they’re talking about?” We do occasionally like, you know, kind of once a cycle or so, you’ll have someone come in and say, like, “Hey, I’m a current T14 admissions officer, but I’m anonymous, and I want to answer your questions on here.” And within like two or three questions, you’re like, “This person is not an admissions officer.”
Sam: Yeah, no.
Anna: “In no world is this person an admissions officer.” So be skeptical, and be discerning in the sources that you’re trusting, certainly.
Sam: Yes.
Anna: Okay. What’s next?
Sam: Okay. I have two more pieces of advice for people who are applying soon.
In a world that is post Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill, where affirmative action is not something that admissions offices can employ anymore, I really wanted applicants to know that you as an applicant are not restricted from sharing anything about yourself in the application.
Anna: Yes.
Sam: Admissions offices and admissions officers are restricted in the data that they can collect from you in terms of checkboxes. They are restricted in terms of how they can go about making their decisions. But you, as an applicant, are not restricted from sharing anything about yourself, and you should. You can share your race, your ethnicity, your gender, your sexual orientation, etc. If that information is important to you and who you are and why you wanna go to law school, or if it pertains to a given school’s specific prompts, you should feel more than free to share that information about yourself. I’ve gotten so many questions about this over the last two years.
Anna: Yeah.
Sam: “Oh, I’ve heard I’m no longer allowed to talk about my race or my ethnicity,” or “I’ve heard that I can’t talk about my sexual orientation, but that’s related to why I wanna go to the law.” You can talk about those things, and you should talk about those things. Same goes for if you were active in an affinity organization or group in undergrad, like let’s say you were in the Black Student Union at your undergrad institution and you were really active in that group and you took on a leadership role, you should put that on your resume, just as you would if you were, like, president of the pre-law society, or an editor on a journal in undergrad. Please include that information, that’s important stuff and contributions that you’ve made, and you should include it.
If there are parts of your background that are important to you, please share it. It’s only going to make your application stronger, and authenticity is key. If that’s a huge piece of what’s going to contribute to the authenticity that’s coming across in your application, you should be sharing it. So please do.
Anna: Yes. That is great advice, and certainly something that we also get questions about all the time. We kind of hear two angles of it, both the question of, is it allowed for me to even talk about these things now, and then the angle of, in this post-SFFA world, even though I can share these things, will it somehow hurt me to include the information that I’m a part of this underrepresented community or this particular perspective that is marginalized for whatever reason? Like is that going to harm me now that law schools are under this new regime?
So I think it’s super helpful for people to hear, sort of,, in any circumstance from anyone who knows what they’re talking about—this is coming from Sam Parker who walked out of the Harvard Law Admissions office and into Spivey Consulting, into this podcast, and is telling you, “No, please do share that information.” If it’s important to your background and your perspective and who you are and what you’re going to be bringing to the legal profession, please share it. Absolutely share it. I’m glad you brought that up. Definitely glad you brought that up.
Sam: Okay, my last piece of advice for people applying this cycle. Please be patient with yourself. This is a very long process. It takes a long time to apply to law school, like I said, anywhere from two to six months typically. And then you have a long time of just waiting—
Anna: Oof, yep.
Sam: —for decisions to come out and waiting for interview invitations. You’re going to feel anxious at different parts of this application process. That is normal, that’s natural, but I want you to trust in the system and trust that admissions officers are working so hard behind the scenes to read and review your apps and get decisions out in a timely manner.
So the best thing you can do when you’re waiting and you’re feeling anxious and you haven’t heard back is, do something to distract yourself, right? And invest in yourself. Maybe that means really diving into your work, if you’re employed, and just doing the best that you can to really leave a lasting impression on the place that you’ve worked before you go to law school, because you’re probably going to need a reference from someone that you’ve worked with for a summer internship or employment after law school.
Maybe it means really focusing on your schoolwork. If you’re still in undergrad or you’re still in grad school, focus in on your schoolwork and try to get the best grades you can, because those transcripts and those grades are still going to matter in the law school admissions process and they’re going to matter to you, right, and they might lead to great connections, or references, or things later in life.
Or dive into a hobby or something fun that really matters to you! Maybe you’ve always been wanting to start a new project or do something new and different and fun. Like, do that! Do something that’s going to be meaningful and fulfilling to you.
Take your mind off the law school application process, especially once you’ve submitted your apps. Decisions are going to come. Some of them come late. We still have applicants from this past cycle, the 2024-2025 cycle, who are still just now getting decisions. Their first decision from some schools, right?
Anna: Yep. Oof, yep.
Sam: And a lot of people who are still on waitlists and waiting to hear. It takes a long time. So be patient, you will get decisions, updates will come. Admissions offices will email you with updates. And again, just don’t post anything you might regret on Reddit related to this. Sometimes, you know, as admissions officers, if we see people really spiraling or getting overly anxious and sharing that online, it can be a red flag that maybe they’re not ready for law school, they’re not ready for the intense nature and the pressure and sometimes the competitive nature of beginning 1L year and being in law school classes. So stay cool, stay calm, be patient, and know you’re going to find out in good time, but it can take a while. And you should just expect that you’re not going to hear back for many, many months.
Anna: That is great, great advice, certainly. I sometimes think that the nature of law school admissions, timing-wise, the sort of rolling nature of things is a little bit crazy-making. The fact that you submit your application and, like, you could hear back two weeks from now, or you could hear back—you know, if you’re on a waitlist—you could hear back 10 months from now, or anywhere in between. And that whole time you’re going to be seeing other people getting decisions and, like, comparing yourself to them, and, “Oh, they have similar numbers to me,” or “Oh, they have worse numbers than me, and they’ve heard back already, and what does this mean?” and all of these questions that can bloom within your brain, and almost none of which can help you in any way, once you’ve submitted your application. Certainly all of the dwelling and research and etc., etc. that you do prior to submitting your application, that can be hugely helpful in your strategy and your formation of an application that is as strong as it can be, but once you’ve submitted those applications, you can spend 10 hours a day scrolling and obsessing about this admissions process, and probably zero minutes of that are going to be substantively helpful for you.
Sam: 100%.
Anna: So I totally agree with you. You know, invest that in your work, invest that in school, invest that in the new hobby that you’ve been wanting to try. 100%, I think that’s wonderful advice that I hope will help some people from digging their own graves a little bit. It can hurt you, and it has very little potential to help you, frankly. So very, very good advice. Am I right, that was your last one for people who are currently applying?
Sam: That was my last piece of advice. Yes. And I know that was a lot, but I had a lot to say! I’ve learned a lot in my time in the HLS JD admissions office.
Anna: That makes sense. And we can always do a follow-up episode, or you can write a blog if you think of another one where you’re like, “I need to share this.”
Sam: Definitely. Definitely.
Anna: Okay. So should we move to people who have recently graduated or are about to be graduating from undergrad but are not yet putting together their application materials?
Sam: Yes. I think that’s a great next category to talk about. So for people who just graduated, again, congrats to you, huge accomplishment. You should feel so proud. And for people who’ve graduated within the last year, my first piece of advice, which I’ve already talked about, is get a job and commit to that job.
Anna: Yep.
Sam: This cycle, I don’t know why, but we saw hundreds and hundreds of applicants who had graduated and they did not pursue full-time employment, and it wasn’t obvious from their resume or their application form that they were up to anything else. No volunteer work, nothing going on with their family. We chose to pass on most of these applicants. And there were a few maybe that we did interview, but when we asked them in an interview, “Well, what have you been up to since graduating?” most of them didn’t have anything to say, and we didn’t admit them. Right? Because we were like, “So what have you been doing for the last six months to a year?” Reason being, again, work experience going into law school matters more now than ever before, because law firms now are recruiting 1Ls before 1L grades even come out. But law firms used to recruit after 1L grades came out. At the very least they would start in the spring semester or after 1Ls had even finished their first year.
Anna: Well yeah, there used to be the rule where you couldn’t before December.
Sam: Yes! Yeah, you couldn’t before December. Now everything’s changed, and law firms are recruiting 1Ls before grades have even come out, which means your resume going into law school is hugely important to helping you get a summer internship or a summer position that might lead to a full-time associate role at a big law firm or elsewhere. And that means that admissions officers are looking for work experience on your resume, because they wanna make sure you’re going to be able to get a summer job, and they’re going to be able to get a job after you graduate, because those stats and those numbers play a huge role in the rankings, which I don’t believe in the rankings—happy to go into that.
Anna: We’d have to have a whole other episode for rankings.
Sam: We’d have to have a whole other episode on that. But that doesn’t mean the rankings don’t exist and that doesn’t factor into those things. And for some schools, rankings are hugely important. So work experience is tantamount.
It also shows that you’re developing professional maturity and professional skills that you’re going to bring to the law school classroom. It means you’re exploring potential interests that you might want to explore in law school. You’ll probably have a better idea of what you wanna do with your law degree if you’ve worked beforehand. You’ll have more context to bring to the classroom. You’ll be more employable. It’s also just nice to get a little bit of a break and work before going back to school, if you’re feeling pretty burnt out like I was when I graduated from undergrad. So, lots of good reasons to get a job, but please get a job.
The second part of that is to commit to that job. We’ve had applicants who, let’s say they sign on to do Teach for America. That is a pretty hard and fast two-year commitment, right? At minimum. And oftentimes, people will do a third year, or more. But if you signed on to a commitment like TFA or you sign on to go work at Deloitte and be a consultant for two years and you have a two year contract, admissions officers want to see you fulfill that commitment and that contract and finish it out. It is never a good sign when we see someone who’s chosen to do TFA and then they only do one year, or they only do half a year and then they leave. I have a personal bias. My husband’s a school social studies teacher. I cannot imagine a teacher abandoning their students halfway through the year or school after just one year. Right?
Anna: Yeah.
Sam: And that’s the same for any job. So if you make a commitment, follow through on that commitment all the way through, and stick with that job, because it’s going to be good for you, it’s good for the organization, it’s going to look good in your law school application. Do it.
Anna: Yeah, for sure. I want to throw a couple of hypotheticals at you related to this piece of advice. Number one, let’s say I am graduating from undergrad right now, maybe I’ve studied a specific field, I have some area of work experience that I’m interested in and that would sort of go with my goals and sort of what I’m hoping to do in the future with law school, etc. etc., but the job market is really tough right now.
Sam: It is.
Anna: And for whatever reasons, I am just not getting a role in that area. I’m just striking out over and over. I’m sending out tons of applications, and it’s just not happening for me. In your professional opinion, what is the course of action there? Do I go and I get a job wherever, do I go work at Costco? Do I go volunteer? Do I try to find a role in some other area that isn’t really related to what I’m interested in, but maybe still has a professional angle? What would be your advice to someone in that situation?
Sam: That is a great question, and I do fully understand the market is very difficult right now, so don’t be stressed if you’re not getting a job right away. It can take a lot of time. I know when I was graduating, it took me many months and months and months to get my first job. And I kind of just latched on to like the first thing I got because it was so difficult to get hired. So don’t stress too much about that. But I would say, like, if you’re not currently employed, if jobs just, like, they’re not getting back to you, you’re not hearing back, you’re not getting the ones that you interviewed for—volunteer. Or consider maybe doing something shorter term, like an unpaid internship if you’re privileged enough to be able to do that, or a paid internship. Get involved in your community in some way. Maybe you can volunteer at a legal non-profit, right? Maybe you can give back and do some public service while you’re actively applying to jobs and trying to find something.
What’s most important is that you’re being proactive and you’re putting effort and energy into getting some type of experience, no matter what it is. And sometimes you’re not going to land your dream job for your first job. That’s so rare. I don’t really know anyone who their first job was like their dream job right out of college, right? Sometimes you do just have to take the first opportunity you get, and what’s most important is that you’re learning professional skills and you’re taking anything that might be transferable to helping you succeed in law school and beyond, and making the most of that, and, like, building those professional skills and capabilities before you go to law school.
So, do something. Don’t just sit around your house applying to jobs for six months to a year. If things aren’t working out, like, get active, go out and into your community, volunteer, give back in some way. Do something to show that you’re making a concerted effort.
Anna: That’s definitely helpful.
My second hypothetical is, let’s say I am in a role where, you know, maybe it’s a one-year contract, it’s a two-year contract, and then something happens. You know, whether it’s a family thing or a personal thing, a health thing, whatever it is, something happens that makes it such that it is just not feasible, you are not going to be able to stay in this role, period, point blank, that’s the decision that has to be made. I already know the answer to this, but I’m going to ask you, what do you do in this situation when you are going to apply to law school, and you know that the law school is going to see that on your resume, how do you convey to them that information, or do you want to convey to them that information? What do you do with that situation?
Sam: First of all, you should 100%, if you’re having a personal or family emergency, something unexpected has come up and it’s just not feasible for you to continue on with your work or get a job, take care of yourself and your family. Admissions officers, if they see a gap on your resume, they’re going to be curious about it. They’re going to want to know what’s going on. So in those situations, I would say be proactive. Write an addendum to include with your application that’s short, it’s factual, but it gives context to that gap on what was happening in your life, what you’ve been up to, so that admissions officers don’t have to guess. In addition, an admissions officer might ask you about that gap and what you’ve been up to in an interview. So be prepared to be able to answer that question.
If you’re fully consumed with whatever it is you’re dealing with, let’s say you’re a caretaker for a family member, that can be all-consuming, that can be a full-time job, right? I’m a mom of an almost three-year-old, that’s a full-time job. I totally get it. If, though, you are taking care of a family or a personal emergency, but you do have some time to, like, volunteer at the same time or be active in your community in some way just to stay engaged, I would encourage that too. But first and foremost, take care of yourself. Take care of your family. Just be proactive with admissions offices and let them know what’s going on so they don’t have to guess.
Anna: Okay. Great advice. Thank you for indulging my hypotheticals here.
Do you have other ones for recent graduates or soon-to-be graduates?
Sam: I do. So, another one that I had is, in a lot of cities where people are working and living after graduation, there are law school fairs and forums and events that are happening in your town, in your city. I would say, like, go to those events. One, they’re really fun. It’s a great way to meet other people applying to law school and other law school professionals or legal professionals. It’s a great way to stay involved and stay up to date with what law schools are doing and what might be relevant to your application. So go to those events. I think they’re just really fun and informative. If you have an option to go or not go, go. Simple piece of advice.
Anna: I like it.
Sam: But take advantage of those.
Anna: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think you can learn so much from those. One thing I will flag just, because I think people occasionally go into those types of events thinking like, “Okay, how am I going to differentiate myself? How am I going to use this to, like, leave a great impression on the admissions officers so they’re going to be more likely to admit me?” What advice do you have to someone thinking that?
Sam: Okay. So I have tabled a number of fairs and forums and events over the years. I’m going to be honest with you, listeners, most admissions officers who are tabling at these huge events where they’re talking to like dozens or hundreds of people in any given day, they’re not going to remember you. They’re not going to remember your name, most likely.
Anna: Yeah. And if they do, it might be for a bad reason.
Sam: And if they do, it’s probably for a bad reason. It’s probably because you took up too much of their time. You were asking questions that were totally out there and not relevant to the law school application process. So I would say, go to these events with the goal of learning for yourself, with gathering information, informing yourself. Do not go with the goal of, “I want to make an impression on these admissions officers,” or “I want to meet them, I want them to remember me.” That should not be your goal, it should never be your goal. Your goal should be, “I’m going for myself to learn, get new information, you know, make a plan for what schools maybe I want to apply to and what next steps I need to take in order to submit a cohesive and successful application.”
Anna: Perfect. Thank you. Okay, what’s next?
Sam: Okay. My next one—and I know we’ve talked about this ad nauseam—but you’ve gotta make a plan to study for the LSAT and take it. I see so many people who just sign up for an LSAT like a month in advance, and then they take it, and they don’t do well. So don’t do that. Like I said, you don’t wanna take the LSAT or the GRE for the first time just to get a diagnostic, because admissions officers are going to see those scores. You also need to give yourself four to six months to study. So you really need to plan ahead, which can be difficult. A lot of applicants out there are using test prep services or tutors. You can, of course, do self-study as well, and there are tons of free resources out there, like LawHub is an amazing resource through the LSAC, which is the company that makes the test, they put out a lot of free practice tests and things that you can take advantage of. But again, you’re going to want to dedicate at least 10 hours a week to studying for the LSAT, and be really diligent and strict with yourself so that you can get a good score, because scores are hugely important in getting into law school to demonstrate your academic potential. Not the only way to demonstrate your academic potential. There are so many other things that matter too, but it’s a serious thing. Don’t go into a blind. I, myself, I took the GRE for grad school. I scheduled that test months and months and months in advance, and I studied so hard for probably four months before I took my GRE, and I’m so glad I did because I ended up getting a much better score the first time than I think I would’ve otherwise.
Anna: Yeah, no, definitely. I think that the timing piece of that is so key, especially at this stage of the process at which we’re sort of directing this section of the tips toward people who are thinking about applying to law school in the future but they’ve graduated and they’re not yet ready to apply. The time to start evaluating LSAT is not the summer before you plan to apply. It’s earlier on. And then if you end up only needing a month to study or two months to study, and then you’re above the median in all of your practice tests that are timed at your target law schools, great. Wonderful. Take it. But you should give yourself that time in case you need it, because a lot of people do need it.
And yeah, as you’re talking about the importance of the LSAT, as you said, it is not the only way to demonstrate your academic potential. But I do want to be clear that, at a lot of schools in the vast, vast majority of cases, it is a baseline requirement.
Sam: Yes.
Anna: So even if you have, you know, a 4.2 GPA, and you have all of these amazing things on your resume, if your LSAT score is 15 points below the median, you very well might not—I never want to be categorical, but you very well might not even really be getting your foot in the door there at all. It’s certainly not the only factor that matters or anything close to that, but it does tend to be, in the vast majority of circumstances, kind of the baseline requirement. So, not to get up to their median, certainly, because, you know, half the class is at or below the median. Not even, like, at the 25th percentile. But if you are, like, way, way below those ranges, it’s a very, very, very difficult door to get into from that point. So the LSAT is incredibly, incredibly important, so it makes sense to me that we’re emphasizing it at various points throughout this episode.
Sam: 100%. I’ll also just say, because I’ve been asked by a couple clients this week, at what point do I stop taking the LSAT or the GRE? Which is a really good question, too. It is the norm and it is the average for people to take the LSAT more than once, right? It is rare for someone to take it just once, and especially rare for someone to get the score they were hoping to on their first attempt. Totally fine to take the test two or three times, especially if you’re giving yourself the time to really study and try to improve that score. If you score, at any point, at your dream school’s median or above, stop taking the test. Sometimes it can be actually a big flag to admissions officers. If you score at the median for your dream school and then you take the test again, admissions officers are going to say, “Why did they retake the LSAT? That’s an expensive test. It’s a lot of time. Why did they retake this test? It makes no sense.” Right?
Anna: Well, especially if you’re Harvard Law School, like, well, who are you even—?
Sam: Yeah. Right? Like, “They have a great score. Why did they do that?” Sometimes admissions officers are like, “Do they have perfectionist tendencies?” Because that sometimes can be concerning regarding someone’s readiness for law school. “Are they going to burn themselves out too quickly when they start 1L year?”
Anna: Right. If it’s to the point that like a 99.9% is not sufficient.
Sam: Right. Exactly. So once you’ve achieved that, there’s no better you can do, stop taking the LSAT, take a break. You are good. And if you’re taking it a sixth or seventh time, you’re taking it too many times. The LSAT was designed to be a consistent and reliable test, which means you should be scoring within the same range, essentially every attempt you make. And we know that’s not always the case, right? Like if you’re studying harder and you’re putting more effort in, you’re using a tutor, you’re probably going to score better, and beyond the first LSAT band or range of scores that you got. But if you’re getting the same score over and over again, don’t keep taking the LSAT. It’s a waste of your time and your money. Just don’t do it. Work on your other application components and make those as strong as they can be.
Anna: I think that’s very good advice. You need to be realistic with yourself when you are assessing whether it makes sense for you to retake the LSAT. So, a part of any strong LSAT prep routine is going to be taking full practice tests under timed conditions, under sort of as close to test day conditions as you can. If you are taking those practice tests and you are not quite getting up to above your previous score, or you’re getting like right around there, but you’re not consistently scoring above, it might not make sense for you to retake.
Sam: Right.
Anna: And it probably makes sense for you to wait until you are able to get to that point where you are consistently scoring above. But if the data is telling you that you’re going to score around the same score, it very well might not make sense to invest your time there any further, unless you have areas where you know, you know, “Okay, I could change my studying in this way,” or, you know, “I’ve only worked in this particular modality, but if I worked with a tutor, I think I could do a lot better.” There are lots of, sort of, exceptions and edge cases and all sorts of various individual scenarios where a lot of this advice gets really sort of nuanced and squishy.
Sam: Yes.
Anna: But absolutely, I think the overarching piece of advice is a very, very strong one and something that I think requires a level of self-awareness that I think is good to cultivate anyway at this time in life where you are embarking upon a new academic and professional endeavor.
Sam: Alright, my next piece of advice for people who just graduated is, if you have not already asked professors for letters of recommendation, if you didn’t ask for those while you were in undergrad, which is a great thing to do, because you’ll be top of mind for them, stay in touch with the faculty who actually taught you, who you are hoping will one day write you a letter of recommendation.
I recommend checking in with them at least once a semester and scheduling an in-person visit or a Zoom or a phone call to stay in touch, but don’t just get on the phone and not have anything prepared to say or to ask them. Right? You should come prepared to those conversations with, here’s a list of updates of things that I’ve been up to, I’m going to reiterate my vision of applying and going to law school for these reasons, I am hoping when the time is ready, you are going to be willing to write me a letter of recommendation. And there’s a lot of tips and tricks, you know, we recommend here in terms of asking your recommenders and preparing them and setting them up for success, but the biggest advice here is, stay in touch with your professors. It’s easy to lose touch. They teach hundreds and hundreds of students. It’s easy to forget about people over the years when you’re just not there and you’re not present and they’re not seeing you all the time, so be proactive in that regard. I kept in touch with my professors for many years after I graduated, before I applied to grad school, and when I reached out, I had already been in touch, right? It was like a very familiar ask. And I actually did have a professor who made me read you some assignments, though, because it had been enough years outside of undergrad, that she was like, “I evaluated your work three years ago, but I don’t know anything about how you write.”
Anna: I’ve never heard of that before. That is so interesting. Oh my goodness.
Sam: Oh, that’s so funny. Yeah, one of my professors was like, “Actually, I need you to, like, do another assignment for me so I can evaluate your skills and your thinking now in order to write you the strongest letter possible,” and it must have worked, because I got into my, like, top school.
Sam: Stay in touch with your professors.
Anna: Yes. Okay. That’s good advice. I will try not to be too distracted by that very interesting anecdote you just offered, okay. We can move forward to the substantive stuff for the applicants.
Sam: Okay. My next piece, I only have a couple more pieces of advice for people who just graduated, but my next one is, set yourself up for success. There are so many amazing resources out there at your disposal. You’re already doing, you know, giving yourself the gift of listening to this podcast and hopefully reading our blog as well, but there’s tons of resources available through the LSAC. There’s also lots of resources available through law schools themselves. I know, where I came from at Harvard Law School, one of our big goals was putting as much information out there and being as transparent as possible with applicants, so that we were being upfront with people about what we were looking for in their applications.
Anna: Yes.
Sam: So take advantage of all those resources. You can get, you know, lots of practice LSAT tests through LawHub, for example, so utilize what’s available to you and stay engaged.
Anna: Yeah. Absolutely.
Sam: Okay, my last piece of advice for this group, we’ve addressed this as well, is start the application process early. Give yourself a super long runway to apply to law school. Because it takes a lot of effort, it takes a lot of time. You don’t want to rush yourself, because that’s probably not going to lead to you submitting the best application that you can. It can take anywhere, like I said, from two to six months to get everything ready for your application. So I recommend, like Anna said, getting your test scores is the first most important thing to do. You should probably be thinking about that a couple years before you’re applying to law school. And then really, you’re going to want to start working on your law school applications the summer before the fall or the winter in which you plan to apply.
So map that all out. I know sometimes it’s hard to think really long-term and think ahead, especially when you’re in a job or you’re in school and you’re so busy and you have a lot of different things to juggle, but give yourself the gift of planning ahead, and give yourself a long runway so that you really are setting yourself up for success, and you’re giving yourself the best chance of getting into those schools that really matter to you.
Anna: I love that wording of giving yourself the gift of that long timeframe, because I think that’s absolutely right. It’s only you who’s going to be feeling the consequences of an abbreviated timeline. That is a stressful process, and it doesn’t mean that you’re not going to get into wonderful schools, but you truly are giving yourself a gift if you give yourself a long period of time to prepare. Great advice.
Sam: Shout out to Danielle Early on the Spivey team who uses that phrase a lot, and I’ve stolen that from her, so I’ll give her full credit.
Anna: We love Danielle here.
Sam: She’s just phenomenal.
Anna: Agreed. Okay. So that is your last piece of advice for future prospective applicants who either have just graduated from college or, you know, maybe graduated a year ago. What advice do you have for people who are still in undergrad?
Sam: I have a lot. So cut me off whenever, and this could even just be an entirely new podcast episode, but for those who are still in college, this is often the group that I wish I could talk to the most, because there’s so many things you need to do while you’re still an undergrad to set yourself up for success in the law school application process, and just in life.
So the first thing I want to say is, let your passions and interests guide you. I get asked all the time, what should I major in? What classes should I take if I know I want to apply to law school down the road? And I always say, like, there’s no set pre-law curriculum that’s recommended for law school. There are no prerequisites for law school. You should choose a major and/or a minor that genuinely interests you and take classes that you’re very excited to take and you’re looking forward to. Because guess what? You’re going to do better in them grade-wise, you’re going to get more out of them, and if everyone coming into law school was a political science major, for example, class discussions would be far less dynamic and interesting in your 1L classes.
Anna: Yeah.
Sam: Admissions offices are looking for people who’ve studied all sorts of subjects from all different backgrounds. At Harvard, we admitted people who were math majors, bio majors, theater majors, English majors, like literally every major out there. So study what is genuinely interesting to you and what you’re passionate about.
I do recommend, if your school offers this, taking at least one law school course or one law-related course just to get a feel for the material, get a sense of whether you like thinking in that way and writing in that way and researching in that way, because that’s a good test for whether law school’s going to be a good fit for you. In particular, if you can take a class that’s taught using the Socratic method, which is the norm for 1L classes, I would highly recommend it just to see how you like it and to see if it’s a good fit for you, and also just to acclimate yourself with it because that’s what you’re going to experience when you get to law school right away. So it’s kind of nice to not go into it totally blind.
Anna: Yeah. That’s good advice.
Sam: So my next one is to challenge yourself academically and to do the best that you can in your classes. We’ve talked a lot about test scores, but your GPA is also hugely important in the law school application process. It is another indicator that showcases your academic potential and how you’re potentially going to do in law school classes. So it’s really important to take your classes seriously and do the best that you can in them. Having Cs and Ds and Fs on your transcript is going to make it really difficult to get into any law school and especially your dream law school. You know, it’s good to challenge yourself, but if you’re struggling with the material in any given class, go to office hours. Use resources that are available on your campus, such as tutors or writing centers. Oftentimes, schools have so many great things to help support you through classes. Utilize them. Please don’t be afraid to ask for help. That’s something I learned the hard way in my first year when I had to withdraw from a class, because I had no idea what I was doing in Chem 6 at Dartmouth College. If anyone’s taken that, you know what I’m talking about. I should have asked for more help, and that was on me, and that was a really hard lesson that I learned my freshman year. So, ask for help.
I will say that admissions officers are going to go through your transcript line by line and they are going to look at every single class you took. And more than once, I have seen faculty call out students who’ve taken a bunch of layup classes or a bunch of classes that appear to be a lot less rigorous than other courses that they could have selected to take. So it’s also important to challenge yourself. Law school’s extremely difficult. It’s rigorous, it’s going to be hard. Admissions officers want to see that you’re up for that challenge. So if you’re just taking a bunch of easy layup classes, that’s not going to do the trick, even if you’re getting all As in those classes.
So, the courses you select are just important. That’s what I have to say about that. So challenge yourself academically, and do the best that you can in those classes, and ask for help. Seek out support if you need it. You’re going to be able to use those skills in law school, too. You’re going to need help in law school. You’re going to want to reach out to mentors and get help with assignments and, you know, exam prep. So it’s good to practice those skills now.
Anna: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s important to recognize that if you are at the stage of your process where you are in undergrad and you’re listening to this podcast and you’re already preparing yourself to be the best possible law school applicant that you can be, you are already ahead of the curve of a lot of people. So many people decide that they want to go to law school the year after they graduate, 2, 3, 4 years, 5, 10+ years after they graduate, and at that point, their undergraduate record, and one of those two sort of most important numerical factors in your application, your undergraduate GPA and your LSAT score, one of those is set in stone. It’s already done. So the fact that you are assessing this at the point where that is still under your control, to some degree, is awesome.
Sam: Yes.
Anna: So use that to your advantage. Listen to Sam’s wonderful advice. You know, take those rigorous and hard classes, and get as high a GPA as you can, and do what you’re passionate about, and you’ll be setting yourself up way better than you could have if you only started thinking about these things a few years from now or after you’ve graduated. I think it’s great that you’re thinking about this at that point, if you are at that point, and listen to everything Sam has to say.
Sam: I just love when I’m able to, like, talk to freshmen and sophomores who are still starting out in college, because I can get to them early enough to actually make a difference. So if you’re a freshman or a sophomore, kudos to you for listening to this podcast and, like, please take all this advice, because you are going to feel so good that you did four years from now.
Alright, my next piece of advice is to be an engaged and kind community member. Admissions officers are looking for prospective students who are going to be involved on campus, so they want to see what you were up to in undergrad, because that’s going to clue them into the type of community member you might be on their campuses. So join clubs, join student organizations, join groups that, again, align with your interests and your passions. You don’t need to join mock trial or pre-law society just because you think that might look good on a law school application. But if that’s, like, genuinely the group, those are genuinely the groups you want to join, go for it. That’s great. But you know, if you’re passionate about something else, join the organizations that you really care about, because probably you’re going to want to take on increasing responsibility in those organizations. You’re going to want to take on leadership roles in those organizations, because you do care about them so much, and that’s going to look great on the law school application, the fact that you took on more work, you worked your way up, and you really gave back to the organization that you benefited from during your time in undergrad.
So be active, and be kind. Again, your reputation is something that follows you. No matter where you go and what you do, it is so important to be a kind and supportive and forgiving community member. Right? I always like to say, assume best intentions. You never know what someone is going through on any given day. They might be having the worst day of their life, and maybe that comes out in a way that is surprising to you and maybe, in some instances, would generate a different response from you, but it costs nothing to be kind to people, and that’s just good karma that you’re going to generate. You’re going to generate a good reputation that’s going to stick with you in law school and beyond, and that’s going to come out in your application.
So just be a good person. Admissions offices want good people on their campuses. If we ever get a hint or a sniff that someone’s not going to be a kind, good, humble community member, we usually pass on them. We don’t even interview them. There are so many amazing people out there we’d rather have.
Anna: Yeah, I mean, that’s great advice for law school admissions and great advice for life. I loved your way of talking about extracurricular activities and getting involved on campus and looking at it through a framework of getting involved in what you’re interested in, because approaching it from that perspective is what is going to lead to you being involved in a sustained manner over several years and maybe gaining leadership positions and doing sort of meaningful real work as opposed to ending up with, like, seven organizations on your resume that you were, like, a member of for one year. Maybe you were a member for all four years but you didn’t really do much in it and you didn’t do a leadership position or get particularly engaged, and that’s the kind of way that, if you’re thinking of it in terms of like, “Okay, how am I going to help my law school applications? I’m going to join pre-law society and moot court and debate and whatever,” but then you’re not actually interested in those, that’s the type of involvement that does not help you nearly as much as if you had just done the things that you were passionate and excited about and gotten really involved in meaningful ways there. Great advice there, for sure.
Sam: 100%. Alright. My next piece of advice is to be strategic about what you do with your summers and to really use the time to affirm that law school is the best path for you. I highly recommend, if you are able and you have the privilege of doing this and it works with your schedule and your family, trying to get some type of law-related internship to see if law is the right fit for you. The law and legal work is not really what it looks like on TV, right? It’s so funny the number of times I get asked about like, “How realistic is the show Suits or Law and Order?”
Anna: Applicants are asking you this like at a law school forum?
Sam: Yeah. Perspective, applicants will ask me like, “What do you think about the show Suits? Is that realistic?” And I always giggle, because I’m like, “No, not at all.” All that to say, most legal work is not in a courtroom. It’s not trial advocacy, it’s not litigation, right? Although there are plenty of people doing those things. But a lot of legal work is very meticulous behind-the-scenes work where you’re doing very intensive research and writing, and it takes a lot of attention to detail, and sometimes it can be quiet and lonely, right? And you’re just like really honed in.
So I think it’s really good to give yourself that exposure and really see what legal work is like, and confirm that that’s something you could see yourself doing, and that you would be happy doing that and you would enjoy doing that. So if you can get some type of law-related internship, I think that’s so valuable. It’s also going to look great on an application when you apply.
But even if you can’t get a law-related internship, I think even just shadowing professionals who are working in the legal field or doing informational interviews, like cold emailing alumni at your school and asking them for 30 minutes of their time just to interview them on their job and, you know, what they do and how they like it is so, so valuable to helping you figure out if this is the right thing for you.
Anna: 100%. You know, as you said, it helps you figure out, is this the right path for me? And I think it also gives you a level of knowledge and understanding that, even beyond what it looks like on your resume, it informs how you are going to talk about yourself and your future in the legal field. Like, I think if you are actually doing a legal internship or shadowing a few attorneys, you’re going to be much less likely to say something like, “I think I’m going to be a great lawyer because I’m good at arguing,” you know?
Sam: Yes.
Anna: Like the kind of thing that comes from a perspective that doesn’t necessarily have a level of nuanced knowledge about what the practice of law actually looks like. So that’s wonderful advice, certainly.
Sam: I’ll also say, any summer job or internship is great. So if you can’t get one that’s law-oriented or law-related, that’s okay. What’s most important is you’re finding work, you’re finding opportunities to hone skills that are going to be important in law school and beyond, such as research, such as writing, analytical thinking, problem solving, communicating with colleagues both in emails and on paper and in person.
So, also totally fine to pursue opportunities that are more interesting to you and more exciting to you. You know, maybe you want to try your hand at a nonprofit or a law firm or work in Congress as a summer staffer. I mean, there’s a million different things you could do with your summers, but do something and use it to just get more information. Use it as an information-collecting exercise and a way to hone some of those professional skills that are going to be invaluable no matter what you end up doing.
Anna: Yeah. Absolutely.
Sam: Alright, my next piece of advice, which we’ve talked a little bit about, is to really get to know your professors and to nurture relationships with them, because they are going to need to write you letters or recommendation. And most law school applicants, especially those applying straight from undergrad, but also ones beyond, depending on the school you apply to, you’re probably going to need at least two letters from people who have actually taught you in the classroom, and they can speak to what you were like as a student. Come to class prepared. Be really active and engaged in the classroom. Although don’t be the kid that asks too many questions and raises their hand constantly so that you, like, annoy everyone.
But be active and engaged. Support and uplift your classmates. Engage them constructively, like, really practice good active listening skills. Go to office hours, get to know your professors, but don’t just go to office hours. You should come prepared with a list of thoughtful questions that you want to discuss with them, that show that you’ve put energy into thinking through what you want to use their time for. You’re not just sitting there and wasting their time. Also, get to know your professors outside of class, right? A lot of schools have programs that allow you to take your professor out to breakfast or lunch or coffee using school funds. I was able to do at my undergraduate campus, and I loved it, because Dartmouth basically paid for me to, like, take my favorite faculty members out for coffee or like dinner, and it was amazing.
Anna: Yeah, I like that program!
Sam: But like, take advantage of those programs. Those are such great opportunities to get to know your professors outside of class, and it’s going to give them more to write about when you do ask them for a letter, and they’re also going to feel more positively inclined to write you a letter when you ask, because they’re genuinely going to know you and be your biggest cheerleader, and they’re going to want to help you and do what they can to get you into your dream school. So really nurture those relationships. I cannot emphasize that enough. Get to know your faculty. Yes, it can be intimidating, but they’re just people. They’re like you and me. They, like, also have hobbies and interests and home lives and families, and you won’t be disappointed to get to know them.
Anna: I like that. They’re just people. It is very easy to lose that perspective when you are 18, 19, 20, 21, and you’re in a college classroom, but that is so true. And this is another area where, like, you should just be so grateful that you’re thinking about this now, knowing that there are so many people who decide that they want to apply to law school and then are like, “Oh crap, I haven’t talked to a college professor in eight years, and, like, I don’t know if I ever even spoke to this person one-on-one.” And you’re very, very lucky to be in a place where you’re able to plan ahead for this. So that’s excellent advice to be getting now. Please take it. That’s my refrain throughout this episode. Please listen to Sam.
Sam: Alright, I just have a few more things I wanted people to know who are still in undergrad. I promise we’re almost at the end of this.
The next one is, use your resources on and off campus. I’ll give another personal story. When I was in undergrad, I don’t think I visited our career office or career support services until my, like, senior spring. What a mistake that was. Why did I do that to myself? They are paid professionals who are there to help you create and edit your resume. They’re there to help you draft and edit your cover letters. They’re there to help you figure out what summer internship opportunities are out there and full-time employment opportunities are out there and help you get those and prep for interviews. I so regret not reaching out for help and getting to know those humans earlier. I was really intimidated by it. Like I said, my parents went to college, but they were first-gen low-income students, and it’s just not something I was taught to do, and nobody told me to do it. So I’m telling you, do this! Utilize your school’s career services office. If your school has a pre-law advisor, get to know these humans. They, again, are just going to be in the crowd that’s supporting you and cheering you on in this process, and they’re going to have so much helpful advice.
Some schools even have funds to help with test prep for the LSAT or the GRE. Ask those questions, and see if your school has those resources, and take advantage of them. There’s so many things I wish I had applied for during undergrad, like funds I could have used for summer internships that weren’t paid or to be abroad over the summers or test prep help, and I just didn’t know to ask. The worst you’re going to be told is, “No, we don’t have something like that, but here are a couple other options of things we do have that might be useful.”
Anna: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That’s great advice, for sure.
Sam: Use your resources.
Okay, my last two—the next one is, if you’re still an undergrad, explore pre-law programs. There are dozens of pre-law programs out there that are going to help you prepare for law school, and a lot of them also include free LSAT prep. So I highly recommend, there’s an amazing database on AccessLex’s website. It’s called the AccessLex Diversity Pathway Program Directory. It lists all of those pre-law programs I talked about on there. If you are someone who, like, you’re the first person in your family to go to college, or you’re the first person in your family to go to law school, or you just have family members who’ve gone to college, but you don’t know anyone who is a lawyer who’s been working in the legal field, these programs are so amazing. They introduce you to the legal profession. They introduce you to law school, what law school’s going to be like and how to apply, and they help set you up for success. So look into them. I would definitely recommend applying. There’s so many out there, and they’re just so helpful.
Anna: Yes. Absolutely. Spivey Consulting is very, very fortunate to work with quite a few pipeline programs and pre-law type of programs. By and large, the people who run these programs are so passionate about them and so genuinely—just the very heart of the program, really, really wanting to help students be able to access the legal profession and get into law school. So absolutely, yes, take advantage of any of those that you might have the opportunity to.
Sam: Okay. My last piece of advice, and I promise I’m done talking. I’m a big talker, as you have learned.
Anna: Good for our listeners!
Sam: Okay. Last thing, and I’ve said this before and I’m going to say it again. Be careful about what you put on social media and what you put online, because anything you put on there is fair game to admissions officers. Be judicious about what you post. I have seen in my time working in law school admissions, there might be a question in someone’s app, and we see that they’ve written a bunch of op-eds for their school’s newspaper. We go check out those op-eds, and then the first one we look at is super negative. It’s, like, a really critical op-ed about the school that they attended or the institution. We don’t want that negative person in our community who’s going to make life really hard for the professionals at school, the staff who are trying to help you, the faculty.
So just be really careful about what you put online, and again, like, be your best self. Be a kind and engaged community member. It costs nothing to be nice. It costs nothing to give people the benefit of the doubt, and assume good intentions. So I just think that’s the best thing to practice your whole life, but especially in undergrad, just be really careful, and, you know, for social media, be careful about what pictures you post online and what you’re saying. You don’t want anyone to find something someday that’s going to give them a reason to not admit you. So be really, really careful. Start that now. Sometimes I think it can be a nice cathartic, reflective exercise to go through your past posts and just check them out and see if there’s anything on there that an admissions officer might look at and think, “Ugh, I don’t know. This raises a flag.” Delete those now, and just don’t do it again.
Anna: This is another one that is good advice for admissions and good advice for life, just, broadly. I think your point about the op-eds type example is such an interesting one, because I absolutely think it is so apt for—people who are interested in applying to law school and being legal advocates oftentimes are the type who are most critical of their institutions and are standing up and wanting to go make a difference and speak up and be loud, and I think that’s awesome, but there is a very fine line between being an advocate in a way that a law school will read op-ed or look at how you’re talking about things and think, “This person is going to be a zealous advocate and a great representation of our institution and our student body,” and, “This person is going to be making life very difficult for our administration, and then the law school’s Dean is going to be saying, ‘Hey, why’d you admit this person?’”
Sam: Yes.
Anna: That can be a hard line to suss out. I would say to err on the side of, as you were saying, being more generous, being more kind. You’re almost certainly not going to go wrong if you err on that side.
Sam: Absolutely. And I’ll be honest, right, when I was an undergrad, I was a huge activist on campus. I was, like, at all the protests, I was in the president’s office every other week talking to him about something important that I cared about, but I did it in a professional way. I was always kind and courteous to everyone I was working with. I always followed the school’s rules. I didn’t put anything online that I didn’t feel represented me in a good light.
So just, again, be judicious. It is totally fine to be an advocate and an activist and to want to make your school a better place or to, like, want to make the world better and to be active in going about doing that, but just do it in a way that’s going to bring people on board with you and make people want to work with you and not make people think that you’re going to make my life really difficult, you’re going to make staff’s life difficult, faculty, the dean’s going to call my office and ask me, “What the heck were you thinking when you admitted this person? They’ve been a disaster.” Don’t put anything in your application or online or anything that an admissions officer can find that is going to give them that idea.
Anna: Okay, so we’ve gone through your advice for people who are applying now, people who are just graduating from college or have recently graduated from college, and for people who are closer to sort of the preliminary opening stages of this process going to undergrad. So, wow, we have covered so, so much. I think this has been incredibly helpful, such a wealth of information. We are definitely going to do a transcript for this one, so hopefully people can, you know, Ctrl+F and search around for specific topics and things like that, but yeah, this has been incredibly enlightening and helpful for our listeners. Thank you so much, Sam. Really, really appreciate your time and for giving this some thought and coming up with your best pieces of admissions advice, because these were some really, really great ones.
Sam: This was so fun. There’s just so much advice I’ve been wanting to share with applicants over the years that I haven’t been able to, or I felt like I couldn’t, or I had to say things really carefully. So this has been really freeing and really fun, and I really hope this advice is helpful to people who are thinking about law school.
Anna: Thank you so much, Sam. This has been wonderful. And thank you, as always, to our listeners. Feel free to follow us, like, subscribe, all of that good stuff. We will be posting law school admissions advice all cycle long on all stages of the process. So feel free to follow us from here, and thank you again.
Sam: Thank you so much for letting me come on the podcast, Anna. This is like such a treat for me as someone who has listened to many podcast episodes from Spivey. Always such great advice, and I’m so excited that you’re letting me contribute to it. I hope the advice that I gave you all has been helpful. I will definitely keep sharing thoughts as they come up, and I’ll contribute to the blog, so look out for that.
But good luck to everyone. No matter what stage of the process you’re in, this is an arduous process, and you should just feel so good and give yourself credit for everything that you’ve done so far, because it’s a lot of work, and you’re just going to feel so proud when you’re done with the whole thing and you submit apps and you can relax, even though you’ll be anxious waiting for decisions.
Anna: Thanks, Sam. Thanks, everybody. Bye!
Sam: Bye!
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